The Zinnowitz Song: A Symbol of Resort Antisemitism

Source Description

This postcard was sold in souvenir shops in the Baltic resort of
Zinnowitz alongside the usual souvenir postcards. Tourists
of an antisemitic
bent could send them to likeminded people as a greeting or use it to sing
along when the Zinnowitz resort band played the song at the finale of each
concert.The songwriter is unknown, and it is uncertain what the
initials “H. Gr.” on the postcard stand for. In 1922, a postcard featuring the “Zinnowitz song” was
forwarded to the “Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen
Glaubens” [Central Association of German Citizens of the
Jewish Faith], which kept a file on the Baltic resort of
Zinnowitz (island of Usedom). Today the
Centralverein’s
surviving files are located at the Osobyi
Arkhiv (Special Archive) in
Moscow.
There also is a microfiche copy at the Central Archives for the History of
the Jewish People in Jerusalem (a copy
of the postcard is filed in the CV holdings, file no. 2405). This image of
the postcard was taken from a DVD collection titled “Spott und Hetze. Antisemitische Postkarten 1893-1945. Aus der Sammlung Wolfgang
Haney” (Berlin, 2008).

In the last third of the 19th
century, well before the National Socialist era, a
growing number of resort towns as well as some hotels and guest houses publicly
declared themselves “Jew free” [judenfrei] in
order to attract antisemitic guests. This “Bäder-Antisemitismus” [resort antisemitism], as it came to be called by
contemporaries around the turn of the century,
developed not only nor primarily in Imperial Germany, but was
an international phenomenon present in many European countries yet also in the
United
States, where it was termed “resort antisemitism.” The advanced hostility towards
Jews in some seaside resorts and spa towns was not merely an expression of
political antisemitism,
for it reflected anti-Jewish attitudes in everyday social life. In part, the
exclusion of Jews from some resort towns had its origins in the socio-cultural
history of early tourism among other things, but it was also a result of the
upward mobility among the Jewish minority in many societies. Until World War I, vacations were
a social and mostly bourgeois privilege, which only a tenth of Imperial Germany’s
population were able to afford. Being able to travel for leisure documented
one’s social ascent as well as one’s belonging among the upper echelons of
society. In the last third of the 19th
century, Imperial Germany’s Jewish minority, having ascended to the
bourgeoisie relatively quickly, increasingly joined the circles of spa and
resort town tourists, thus symbolically knocking on the doors of “respectable
society.” While this inspired resentment among the traditional, noble and
wealthy bourgeois clientele against the “nouveau riche” upstarts, resort antisemitism was most
virulent among the lower middle class, who could not afford luxurious resort
towns and hotels and thus projected their envy mostly onto the Jewish minority.
This was one reason why it was not the established, traditional resorts
(Baden-Baden, Norderney, Heringsdorf, Westerland) which
positioned themselves as antisemitic, but mostly newer resorts such as Borkum or Zinnowitz, which were
latecomers in the tourism industry and aimed at attracting a lower middle class
clientele by appealing to their prejudices. Since resort antisemitism spread
particularly in the seaside resorts on the North Sea and the
Baltic,
Hamburg’s
Jews were especially affected by this phenomenon for geographical reasons, as
they were more likely to spend their vacations in the north of Germany
than to travel a long way to the Alps or the Mediterranean.

Marginalization through anti-Jewish songs

In legal terms, resort antisemitism was a grey area since the proprietors of hotels and
guest houses had the right to choose their guests and couldn’t be held to
accommodate everyone indiscriminately. At the same time, Jews enjoyed the right
of free movement in Imperial
Germany and therefore could not be legally prevented from
entering certain towns. Aware of this, antisemitic resort towns sought to discourage
Jewish visitors by means of constant and obvious marginalization. Anti-Jewish
songs played daily by the resort band [Kurkapelle] which animated numerous anti-Jewish tourists to sing
along played a major role in this attempt. This was particularly true of catchy
refrains such as that of the Zinnowitz song: “...Fern bleibt der Itz
– von Zinnowitz” [Away the kike will stay – from
Zinnowitz].
It is not surprising that Jewish tourists did not feel like spending their few
weeks of annual vacation among antisemites in this atmosphere. “It is disgusting
that such hate speech is permitted,” an appalled Victor Klemperer,
professor of Romance languages from Dresden, remarked in
1927 after having reached Zinnowitz during a walk
along the shore and finding the “Zinnowitz song”
(“imbecilic rhymes”) in many shops. The German-Jewish press in turn began
publishing warning lists at the opening of the resort season which made sure
that Jewish tourists did not even try to visit those towns that had publicly
declared Jewish visitors unwelcome. The development of antisemitic songs was mostly influenced by the
style of the “Borkum song” [Borkumlied] publicly sung as early as 1890. While Prussian Minister of the
Interior
Friedrich von Moltke
in 1908 classified singing the song as a “grave
insult,” he simultaneously stated that he could not take any legal measures
against it. During the early period of the Weimar Republic in
particular, numerous new rhymes and imitation songs were written, one of which
was the “Zinnowitz song” discussed here, another one was the “Wangerooger Judenlied” [Wangerooge’s Jew Song].
The “Zinnowitz
song” lyrics clearly show that it was written during the early days of the Weimar Republic: The
specific mention of the colors “black, white, and red” – the flag of Imperial Germany, which had
ceased to exist in 1918 – is a reference to the
introduction of the black, red, and gold flag as symbol of the Weimar Republic. The
greeting addressed to the “German Land of Borkum” makes reference
to the controversy about the “Borkum song”, which had
escalated during the early days of the Weimar Republic, and which
served as model for the “Zinnowitz song” in both melody (the Imperial march “Hipp, Hipp,
Hurra!”) and rhyme scheme. Both songs feature a refrain expressing an antisemitic message aimed
at marginalizing Jewish tourists (Borkumlied: “And whoever approaches with flat
feet/with hook noses and curly hair/shall not enjoy your beach/he must go away,
he must go away! Away! ;” Zinnowitzlied: “And whoever approaches from the Tribe of
Manasseh/Is not wanted/He will be turned away/We do not like foreign races!/Away
the kike will stay – From Zinnowitz! ”) The swastikas printed on this postcard do not
feature as NSDAP symbols
in this instance since the party did not exist on Usedom in the early
1920ies, but instead are
meant to symbolize German nationalist and antisemitic sentiment.

Resort antisemitism in
Zinnowitz

Overall, songs like this one testify to growing antisemitism in post-World War I society. At the
same time, they also mobilized the opponents of antisemitism in the Weimar Republic, especially
in Prussia, where
Walter Bubert,
the Social Democrat district administrator for the island
of Borkum, and
Jann Berghaus,
left-wing Liberal district president, banned the
“Borkum
song” from being played, had the Borkum resort band
arrested and their instruments confiscated. Consequently, the local
administration in Zinnowitz initially acted more moderately, pointing out that
the antisemitic agitation
and the public singing and playing of the “Zinnowitz song” in
particular was the work of tourists of that conviction against whom they were
powerless. This was true insofar as antisemitism in Zinnowitz was mainly
instigated by the “Zweckverband zur Freihaltung des
Badeortes Zinnowitz für deutschblütige Kurgäste”
[Association for the Preservation of the Resort of Zinnowitz for Visitors
of German Blood] founded in 1920, whose members were
almost exclusively tourists. Yet the town’s tourism board, when advertising the
“German Baltic
Sea Resort of Zinnowitz” in its 1926 brochure, expressly pointed out that “long-standing
efforts have been made by the regular visitors to our beautiful resort to keep
it free from Semitic spa tourists.” For communities and tourist boards, but
mainly for the local proprietors of hotels and guest houses, resort antisemitism was a
profitable business, so that attempts to curb it by legal or administrative
means met with little success overall. Its long-term consequences consisted in
establishing zones of tourist apartheid, thus reducing social contact between
Jews and non-Jews and facilitating the Jewish minority’s exclusion during the
“Third Reich.” Thus it is not surprising that spa and resort towns played a
pioneering role in the public exclusion of Jews in Nazi Germany after 1933.

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About the Author

Franz Bajohr, Prof. Dr. phil., born 1961, is professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and scientific director of the Centre for Holocaust studies at the Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich. His focus of research is: history of the Holocaust and the NS-period, history of antisemitism, German contemporary history, elites in the 20th century and history of tourism.

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.